Woolworths Overview Of The Company Marketing Essay

Woolworths Overview Of The Company Marketing Essay Its core business focus is the provision of retail and financial services to upper and middle income groups mainly in South Africa but also in Africa, Australia and New Zealand.  This includes men, women and kids. Who are the competitors in the market? Other retailers selling food (butchers, bakers, convenience stores, etc. excludes takeaway food and restaurants) Mass merchants (including discount department stores; department stores) Size of the company Woolworths Holdings Limited is an investment holding company and one of the top 100 companies listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange Shares in Woolworths: 52% of market Employees:  24,649 Stores:  637 Turnover:  R 25.582bn p/a Market share: 9%-10%   Vision: Woolworths vision is to provide quality products and services to its customers all the time through price strategies, fresh food strategies and human resource strategies. Woolworths main strategies are to increase efficiency and be cost effective. Mission: Woolworths mission statement and main strategy is to deliver to customers the right shopping experience each and every time. Goals Sustainable growth within the context of the changing social and environmental needs Woolworths goal is to work harder to drive social development poverty drives environmental destruction and that in turn creates more poverty. To help alleviate poverty, we need to expand the existing initiatives of the Woolworths Trust and link with the transformational goals to drive enterprise development. The third priority relates to Woolworths impact on the environment, in particular the issue of diminishing biodiversity.   The fourth priority addresses climate change directly by focusing on reducing Woolworths carbon footprint. Woolworths recognizes climate change as an issue requiring urgent action if the risk of serious damage to global prosperity and security is to be avoided. Strategy: The strategic intent considers four areas of focus: the customers, operations, and the people. Woolworths main strategy is to increase efficiency and be cost effective.   Under this strategy there are different strategies that the company uses such as price strategies, fresh food strategies and human resource strategies/growth strategy. QUESTION 2 What would you change? What parts of the strategy? Low price Strategy: (high quality vs. low price) I would change the current pricing structure as it gives negative perception about the quality of their products. For consumers to believe that they offer high quality, price must be slightly more than usual as it creates a value-add considering the input costs. Product Strategy: (healthy organic foods) I would increase the percentage of organic food in the stores to increase/promote healthy eating. Growth strategy: (entering new markets) The stores are currently situated in high economic areas. I would therefore introduce Woolworths into low to medium income earners in different locations. Why would you change it? (What internal/external forces?) Low price Strategy: (high quality vs. low price) Because the input (fixed variable) costs have to be considered in order for the value added to be fairly presented so that the company can also see a good profit depending on the area of location. E.g. a Woolworths store in Cape Town will differ in prices to a Woolworths store in Mitchells Plain. Product Strategy: (healthy organic foods) When a big amount of customers consume a lot more of organic products, the will relate to Woolworths as the healthy alternative. Growth strategy: (entering new markets) This will give everyone the same shopping experience and affording them a chance not to travel too far for shopping. Safety strategy: When this is implemented in families, it can have a multiplying effect and reach a lot of people within a short period. Financial Services: (credit cards personal loans) Both cards allow customers to earn W points. Therefore, it is not necessary to have cards instead of one. One stop shop: (sells a variety of things) I would focus only on one or two offerings as too many products create confusion regarding the real product offering. QUESTION 3 How would you change it? Low price Strategy: (high quality vs. low price) I would push the price a bit higher because the high quality does not match the price. I would include all costs, improve packaging and set a higher mark-up. Product Strategy: (healthy organic foods) I would get more suppliers of organic food on board and attract more healthy-conscious customers as well create more awareness on healthy eating and how it impact on effective leadership. Growth strategy: (entering new markets) I would introduce more Woolworths stores in medium income areas first. Then, I would roll it out to low income areas (townships) such as Khayelitsha. Advantages My strategy achievement in terms of company goals Low price strategy: one of Woolworths main strategies is to increase efficiency and be cost effective. The advantages of our strategy, the high price high quality strategy, would allow the quality of Woolworths goods to be high all the time. There will be less costs going into the research and implementation of many of the many strategies for Woolworths, to allow for the high quality low price strategy. It will also be less time consuming for Woolworths and Woolworths is known in the past for having high prices. People still have the perception of Woolworths having high prices. Product Strategy: Because they have allowed for these high prices they are also able to increase the percentage of organic foods. This is obviously good for healthy eating habits and maybe in the long term decreasing the unhealthy eating disease rate in South Africa. Woolworths can also create healthy eating plans for individuals to increase buyers for the company. Growth strategy: (entering new markets) the advantage of this would be to increase the Woolworths clientele. This would allow for many other buyers to experience the Woolworths experience. Safety strategy: The advantages of this would be promoting the good ethics of the Woolworths Company. Financial Services: the advantage of merging the visa and the difference cards would allow for efficiency when coming to the till at a Woolworths store. You will be able to have the choice on which transaction you would like to use. This will allow for more customers to get involved with both choices. Having one Woolworths card with both options is better than having two cards. One stop shop: The advantages of having all these products is that it caters for all needs. This also allows the company to use a variety of promotion techniques to get through to their customers. Disadvantages Low price strategy: At the moment times are tough and people are still suffering from the last recession. To increase the prices could make the company have a bad name. The main reason they decrease the price is to give everyone the chance to have the Woolworths experience and be in the same level as their competitors offering goods at better quality. So increasing the price could steer the customers away although a slight increase wont really affect the customer too much because of the quality of their products. Product strategy: Costs of these organic goods are expensive and the company is already trying very hard to keep high quality goods at low prices. Growth Strategy: Woolworths prices are higher than the usual Shoprite. Many people in low earning areas tend to go to Shoprite but there quality of food is not as good as Woolworths. People in low income areas are not really interested in quality and they are more interested in price. I feel it is a disadvantage to put a Woolworths store in low income areas because they will not make enough money to keep the store going. Maybe they could increase the amount of stores in the medium earning areas but still this would be a far reached goal to bring it in the low earning areas. The price of the goods is just too high. Safety strategy: Because this is seen as part of work. Most workers wont want to waste their time extending this technique to their families. It will be seen as extra work to be done. Financial services: this will be time consuming for the company and there will be costs involved to implement this strategy. One stop shop: Woolworths has already made itself known for having all these products but some products are more known to their customers then others. Woolworths needs to have their other products, like homeware, better promoted. Having all these products is the store can be costly. People will rather choose to go to Mr. Price home than to buy homeware appliances at Woolworths. Woolworths needs to strengthen their market in there other products or they will be losing profits. Conclusion Woolworths strategy works very well. It works so well that I feel these small changes wont make much of a difference because they know what they have and they know where they are in the market. They were able to change their strategy over the years and even by doing so it has made them even more successful. This is the reason I feel there strategy is well implemented. QUESTION 4

Davy Crockett Essay

Davy did many thing through out his childhood all the way up to his adulthood. Davy was born in Tennessee on August 17, 1786 . John crockett (davy’s father) sent Davy to work for a man who was taking a herd of cattle to Virginia at age 12. Davy helped the man drive cattle for over 200 miles from Tennessee to Virginia. The trip was a little over 2 weeks, and then Davy finely returned home. Soon after, the man Wanted Davy to keep working for him. Davy was homesick but he still said yes. About one month later Davy could not stand being away from his family. So he ran away from the mans house and headed home. At age 13 Davy set out on his own, and learned to become one of the worlds greatest/and craftiest backwoodsman around. Legend says that Davy was friends with a bear and could get a raccoon to come down from a tree by just grinning at it . At age 16 Davy moved back to Tennessee with his family. In 1811 Davy’s family moved to Tennessee. They made there home near what is now the border of Alabama. By 1813 the white men had made the native Americans very made. The native Americans were called the creeks. The reason for the creeks being made is because the white men took there land. The white men thought the creeks were going to attack so they attacked first. the creeks fought back against the white men. This started a war. Davy helped the creeks fight against the white men. When Davy got back from the creek war, Polly gave birth to a daughter. Polly died in the summer of 1815. In 1816 Davy married Elizabeth Patton to care for his two children, let alone her own three children. In 1816 Davy almost died of malaria, and in 1818 Davy becomes a â€Å"court referee† in Lawrence country, Tennessee. In 1821 David Crockett was elected to the state legislature at age 35. In 1827 David Crockett was elected to the House of Representatives in Congress. David Crockett served in congress from 1827-1831, and then he served in Congress again from 1833- 1835. when he was in Congress he often made speeches and told many of his adventures. Books came out filled with information and stories about Davy’s life. They even made a lay about Davy called the lion of the west in 1831. David Crockett and a congressman Thomas Chilton wrote a book about Davy’s life. Davy was a legend while he was still living, and still is a legend to this very day. in 1835 David Crockett moved to Texas. Texas was not a state when Davy moved there. Davy was now 49 years old and he wanted to explore the frontier . Davy joined the Texas army. David fought in the Texas revolution in 183 6. the Texas Revolution was over a Mexican government that ruled Texas. The people who lived in Texas wanted to be free from the Mexicans.

Changing Workforce Essay

Introduction: It is no surprise that the workforce is on the move and changing at a growing rate. There are several factors that lead into the changing workforce and play important roles. There are the workers who are leaving, the ones who will be staying and the new ones who will be entering, all of which have an important role to play in the US economy. This topic is important but it seems to weigh a little more heavily during an election period like we are in now. When the unemployed rate is high and the national debt is at an unprecedented amount it makes me wonder, who will our job force consist of and how will it be changing? Some of the important things that need to be considered when looking into how the workforce is changing is who is now entering the workforce that was not previously in it? How will this affect competition for jobs? Are education levels affecting the workforce? Childcare and Eldercare seem to be playing an increasing role in who works and who stays at home to care for th eir families, will this change? More minorities are also working in the US making a big change to the workforce, how does this play out with HRM and other parts of management? All of the questions and statements above need to be answered in order to find out why the workforce is changing and who comprises the majorities now. The workforce today is much more different than just 20 years ago. It is important as a human resource manager to stay up to date on these things and to know what the coming trends are for who you might be looking to employ. Significance of the topic to the field of Human Resource Management: The effects of the changing workforce on Human Resource managers are quite large. As of 2007 in healthcare there are older workers than younger ones. The issues arise in HRM with this when the technology is changing and schools are teaching different things that the older generations are not as familiar with if at all. The changing of technology in any field is greatly  affecting all parties involved. The issue of globalization and learning new policies and procedures of how to handle a workforce that is not in the same location you are is also something that is on the rise. The changing of the demographics as well as competition also plays a large role in why HRM is becoming such a fast paced changing job. The biggest issue that the US sees in the trend of the workforce changing is the older workforce. With an aged employee base come issues with health cost, retirements, age discrimination and succession planning. All of these things have to be considered and taking very seriously in HRM. It is important to handle all the issues legally and just fully but with the things like increasing healthcare cost for the older generations things get tough for the managers and decision makers. Literature Review: The article Trends and Challenges for work in the 21st Century goes over a lot of points on the changing workforce and what is making it change. It includes things such as changing demographics and why they are changing, the issue of people having or choosing not to have children while in and out of the workforce as well as our aging workforce. It looks at things such as insurance and pensions and whether or not those have any effects on people choosing to stay in the workforce longer or shorter amounts of time. Lerman, R. (n.d.). Trends and challenges for work in the 21st century. Retrieved from http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/herman/reports/futurework/conference/trends/trendsVII.htm This article had figures from the women in the workforce. It examined how many have children under 18 versus those who have children over 18 and are in the workforce. I think the goal of this study was to see how many females with younger children choose to stay at home rather than work. They also included a study of the race and sex of employees in the workforce and how it has changed. This article seemed to find that with the changes in technology, the adding of more women and more minorities to the workforce has made drastic changes and will continue to do so over the next decades. The article seems to lean on the side that people are choosing less or no children and that enables them to work more. However, having less or no children directly impacts the workforce for the coming generations. Nursing Leadership is a publication of where I found  the second article I reviewed. Although it focuses on one career instead of the workforce as a whole it is very specific how the workforce change has affected the nursing and medical industries. The change in technology seems to be the hardest adjustment for the ones who have been in the workforce the longest. Spinks, N. (n.d.). The changing workforce, workplace and nature of work. Retrieved from http://www.longwoods.com/content/19286 In this article Spinks talks about in 2010 that the older workforce will outweigh the younger ones. She talks about issues of predicting retirement, â€Å"Women’s retirement patterns are somewhat less predictable because we are only now beginning to experience large numbers of women in the paid labour force working until retirement†. (Spinks) Although the article is done about healthcare she makes a lot of good notations and observations about the workforce as a whole. In this article she lays out 7 strategies and solutions to help maintain a good strong workforce. Spinks did a lot of her observations and studies in Canada. One section of the article talks about having a workforce shortage and I can assure you the US has not had this issue in the last few years. She found that the workforce in Canada is much like the population there, many are not from Canada but rather born somewhere else and migrated there or their ancestors came to Canada making the work population there very diverse. To me it seems Spinks found that technology and diversity in the nursing and healthcare industry are the biggest struggles when you start to think about the workforce changing. That although this study was done in Canada where their health system is a bit different from that of the US the overall concept of the workforce aging and changing is the same. In the article the workforce is changing the way we do business printed in the USA today magazine the author talks about the corporations being able to keep up and how to handle the changes. The author goes into some detail on how to keep a completive edge even when your employee base that you once knew is now completely different. The author also talks about what to look for in the new employees that will be emerging, or what kind of people you should look to hire. Herman, R. E. (n.d.). The workforce is changing the way we do busines. Retrieved from http://www.retentionconnection.com/retention_article_workforce_changing.html This article explores the idea that its not just customers looking to be satisfied within a business but the workers are as well. Herman states that  while there are people out there willing to do work there are not enough qualified for the skilled jobs, thus making the competitive advantage harder to achieve today. One idea that Herman explores to help with this problem or situation is to concentrate on building workforce stability. He explains it like this â€Å"Concentrate on building workforce stability. Forget the revolving door of recruiting and hiring any warm body. It doesn’t work and will just create more problems for you. Replacing people who leave will become more chal lenging. Evaluate the qualifications for your next hire(s), and become more selective. If you’re going to invest in retention, you might as well have good people to retain.† (Herman) This article to me states there is indeed changes happening in the workforce but more importantly is how as a business we embrace the changes and hang on for what could be a rough time. It shows the importance of having skilled workers to help your company but at the same time there are not as many of them as there once was. Workforce planning makes for a smarter reduction in force is an article that seems to relate very well to the economic times the country has been and seems to be copiously enduring in regards to jobs and job demands. The idea that businesses need to cut cost means they have to look at lowering their work force to save money. This takes a different approach then the normal how is the workface changing articles bur rather how are businesses changing the workforce. Garbis, N. (01, 2010 06). Workforce planning makes for a smarter reduction in force. Retrieved from http://www.humanresourcesiq.com/business-strategies/articles/workforce-planning-makes- This article goes over the idea that businesses in this time of the economy being hard and not being as profitable they sometimes offer the employee to take some sort of severance package and leave. Garbis says you have the worse problem when to many leave, or you forecast incorrectly of how many of your workforce you need to eliminate. His studies show that having workforce planning in place can be very beneficial but it is something that needs to be re-visited often so that to many or to few employees are let go back out into the workforce when really they are needed. The article A Global March toward an aging workforce was written after a speech by an author of a man named Ted Fishman. Fishman looks at the ideas that the age range of the world population and those who are working now is not near the same as it was a decade or two ago.

123magic by Thomas Phelam compared to Bf Skinner operant conditioning Free Essay Example, 1250 words

Running head: Dr. Phelan’s Magic vs. B.F. Skinner Dr. Phelan’s Magic vs. B.F. Skinner s name] [Date] Dr. Phelan’s Magic vs. B.F. Skinner Parenting seems like a grueling task and there are many things that the individuals fail to do correctly when dealing with young children. Dr. Thomas Phelan’s book titled â€Å"1-2-3 Magic† specifically focuses on a disciplinary tactic that would help parents to deal with their children’s unruly habits; particularly those, who are between the ages of 2 and 12. Being a behaviorist, the primary hypothesis that Dr. Phelan uses to base his theories on is that all behavior in human beings is developed as a result of conditioning, which refers to various cues that regulates the probability of the behavior occurring again. As a result, there may be certain similarities between Phelan’s 1-2-3 Magic and B. F. Skinner’s operant conditioning theory. However, before subjecting the contents of the book to a comparison with the works and theories developed by Skinner, the substance of this prose will first summarize the notions discussed by Dr. Phelan. According to Phelan’s Magic theory, children should not be dealt with using force and the only way to properly tackling them lies in giving them due warning before applying consequences to their behavior; hence, it is 1, 2, 3 and then ‘Magic’. We will write a custom essay sample on 123magic by Thomas Phelam compared to Bf Skinner operant conditioning or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/page